The Dark Door

by Kate Wilhelm

Book Overview

Someone is setting fire to abandoned hotels, restaurants and schools around the country, at erratic intervals, in apparently arbitrary locations. Worse, each arson is accompanied by murder and mutilation. Unlikely detective team Charlie Meiklejohn and Constance Leidl must call upon all their skills to uncover the terror behind this insanity.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0944276776
• ISBN13: 9780944276778
• Release Date: March 1990
• Publisher: Tudor Publishers
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.

Customer Reviews

an entertaning cross of genres

I started this book, expecting it to be just another traditional mystery novel and was rather pleasantly surprised to find out that it had some horror (my genre of choice) undertones as well as sci-fi. Actually,with the exception of prologue and epilogue, sci-fi part could be easily dissmissed and when you think about, it isn't much about detecting either, as the sleuths in the book figure out fairly early on what's going on and spend the rest of the time chasing and attempting to destroy the evil that hides behind the title "dark door". In my opinion, the story had much more potential as a horror novel, with a good spooky original idea and great setting places. One thing about reading a book that is a part of series is the preprogrammed notion of the invinsibility of the main characters, which taints the whole idea of a good scare. Although that does sound rather morbid:) With the exception of Carson/John, the characters didn't do much for me,as they kind of lack that "certain something", however seemed well developed and rather believable. The real star of the "production" was definetely the idea behind the story itself. I would have given it about three and a half stars, but it was overall an entertaining read and I guess it put me in a generous mood:)

More mystery or horror than science fiction

Although wrapped in a science fiction premise, a lost alien probe moving around the earth seeking something not revealed, this book is a captivating detective story. The characters are well written and believably human. I read this book in two sessions, an evening and the next morning, and would have read it through in one go had not tiredness gotten the best of me.

I couldn't wait for the last page to see what happened!

I started this book a little bit before my bedtime and read half of it before I forced myself to go to bed. I thought that it was a novel idea (no pun intended) to have evil as not being native to Earth but sent here by an entity in another galaxy. I thought her characters were not only well developed but believable. The action is nonstop and the two main characters were a great sleuthing team that I wished were featured in a series. I hope you enjoy this book as much as I did.